


Never Doubt I Love

by blueangel



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-27
Updated: 2012-09-27
Packaged: 2017-11-15 03:18:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/522556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blueangel/pseuds/blueangel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Her last thought is of Arthur, how he had smiled all those years ago, how she had taken her hand in his hand and thought it was the beginning when it had turned out to be the end.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Never Doubt I Love

**Author's Note:**

> title inspired by the Shakespearean quote “Doubt that the stars are fire, doubt that the sun doth move, doubt truth to be a liar, but never doubt I love.”

Arthur Dayne meets Elia Martell when they are just children. Their mothers are good friends and whenever they can Arthur, Ashara, Elia, and Oberyn all play in the Water Gardens together.

  They splash each other in the fountains and eat blood oranges in the shade of the trees.

Arthur shall never admit it but Elia was his favorite.

She was more reserved than his sister, and certainly gentler than her brother. While Oberyn and Ashara feel the need to climb the mountains of Dorne, Elia is content to sit and read to the younger ones beneath the shade of the trees. Arthur always sat next to her, feeling the words lap over him like waves on the sand.

He is a boy fascinated with a pretty girl, and later when he is older and the ground feels like it as about swallow him he shall remember her voice weaving around him, like some Valyrian spell meant to keep him in her embrace.

\-----------------------------

Her hands shake and she trips over words as she reads of Florien and Jonquil. The children don’t seem to notice and Elia tries to ignore the rising heat in her cheeks as she feels her shoulder bump his.

Oberyn always teases her and Ashara for all her youth, always seems to have a knowing smile on her face when she catches Elia staring at Arthur from the corner of her eye.

 Later when she is older she shall reminisce how she was naïve enough to think herself in love, as children often with an infatuation. For now she grabs his hand, a bold move for her, and intertwines their fingers together. They smile shyly at one another.

\-------------------------------

 He is given Dawn when he is six and ten and the days at the Watergardens are far behind him. He has not seen Elia or Oberyn in years. Since he had turned three and ten his life had been devoted to the wielding of his houses ancestral sword.  Arthur feels invincible when he wields the milky blade and nothing else matters more other than his family who he swears to protect with his last breath.

\-------------------------------

She is not disappointed when her betrothal to Jamie Lannister falls through. He was handsome enough; the young lion of Casterly Rock, but something about him is _off_ , and even when Elia had merely offered her condolences his sister had looked at her with disdain. She shrugs it off as grief.

She asks her mother later who she would marry now. Her mother had frowned, tears still wet on her cheeks from the news of Joanna Lannister’s death, and had said that she did not know.

Elia hopes that she shall never have to marry. She wishes that she could be like Oberyn, free to take whomever she pleased to her bed and to travel the world as she sees fit, but she is once more reminded how broken she is when spends the next three moons in bed, the travel to Casterly Rock having exhausted her.

She hates herself, hates how weak she is. How can she be unbent, unbowed, and unbroken when she cannot even rise from her bed?

\------------------------------

They meet again when he is eight and ten.

His family travels to Sunspear for Oberyn’s nameday, and while he is happy to see his sister and old friend again, she catches his eye immediately.  

Elia is still as shy and gentle and utterly intoxicating as she always was, and she still doesn’t seem to know it.

   He spins her around and watches her laugh and smile and he thinks that she is not the young girl she once was.  

\----------------------------

She lets Arthur kiss her in the darkened hallways of Sunspear. He does not treat her gently as other men have and for that she finds herself just a little bit in love with him.

\----------------------------

She tastes sweet like spun sugar and he cannot help but push her against her chamber door. He wished he could blame intoxication, but everyone in Dorne knows that he could drink even Oberyn under the table.

When he pulls back and tries to apologize she gives him a steely look and he shuts his mouth. He expects her to order him from her sight, but instead she takes one step toward him and tugs at his hair, her lips brushing his ear as he whispers obscenities in his ear.  To his surprise she tugs at his arm and leads him into her chambers without another word.

From then he is consumed with her heady scent and her darkened skin as she wraps herself around him. He knows that from then on he is lost man.

\-------------------------------

She tries not to cry when the king picks him for his guard. She is angry with him, with the king, with the whole bloody Seven Kingdoms for taking him away from her, but she knows that to refuse means death.

    Oberyn tries to comfort her- tries to make her laugh with his bawdy jokes but she only shrugs him off and tells him to leave her be.

Arthur leaves her with only a lingering kiss on the lips and empty words, and she wonders how the gods could be so cruel.

\---------------------------------

He was naïve.

He thought he could make a difference with Dawn by his side, but he doubts it very much now, and while respects his brothers, the king and the white cloak mean nothing to him. He protects the man because it’s his duty- he sees everything and does nothing because he has sworn vows.

He hates himself for it.

\------------------------------

When he hears of Elia’s and Rhaegar’s betrothal something in his stomach drops. He respects the prince more than his father, but that means little. The prince may be better than his father but there is something in him that Arthur doesn’t like. He feels that at any moment the Rhaegar could jump off of some unnamable edge and into madness.  

His only consolation is Jamie Lannister who he sees so much of himself in. He drills the boy until he bleeds because he wants any semblance of himself gone from the boy. He does not want Jamie to suffer like he has suffered.

\------------------------------

She looks for his face in the sept of Baelor.

When her mother had told her that she was to marry the prince Elia knew she could not refuse. No one refused the Targaeryn’s. Her mother tells her it is an honor that the Martells and the Targaeryns have a long history together, and it is just so that they should be united once more.

Elia feels like she has been sentenced to a dungeon of the cruelest sort. Rhaegar is kind- he is a prince of songs, but Elia can never love him.

So she looks for Arthur’s face of the crowd of nobles who appraise her. She finds him standing behind the king, as was his duty, standing at her with unseeing eyes. Her breathe hitches and when he doesn’t acknowledge her she turns her eyes to Rhaegar.

She dreads the bedding.

She prays that Rhaegar does not notice that she is not a maiden.

She tries to close her eyes, not wanting to see the hair that is too silver and the eyes that are the colors of amethysts instead of lavender.

\---------------------------

He watches her tread court carefully. Everyone watches as she doesn’t swell with child.

They mock her, saying that the prince would rather spend his nights among dusty books than with his little Dornish wife. He wants to cut them all down.

\---------------------------

Elia does not speak with Arthur except for courtly conversations that mean nothing, and the only times that she touches him is when she thinks no one is watching, and that is a rare thing indeed, and even then she only allows her hand to brush his.

It is a torture that no one should be allowed to endure.

\----------------------------

It’s reckless and stupid, what happens next. If Aerys ever found out he wouldn’t hesitate to burn them both and they know it. Still, Arthur begs Lewyn to stand guard, because his sworn brother is the only one who can understand.

She waits for him in her inner chambers. He does not remember the words spoken; just that she strips him of his armor piece by piece; touches and kisses his scars, and welcomes him into her embrace as if the past years did not happen.

\-------------------------------

Rhaenys is beautiful, a Martell baby through and through.

She is weak and tired but her does was worth every ounce of pain, and Rhaegar does not suspect a thing. Elia bites her lip when Rhaegar holds her daughter for the first time and proclaims her his.

When all is silent she leads Arthur to the nursery and lets him hold his child. He smiles with a sort of sadness and she feels suddenly the guilt that Arthur shall never truly know his daughter.

He may watch from afar but he shall never be able to show affection. Arthur would never get to his acknowledge his child, _their_ child. That is the saddest part of all, but that is the price they pay for such an affair.

\-----------------------------

Arthur grows more and more worried every day. Aerys rants on about fire and the queen seems to awaken with a new bruise ever day. The court seems to tread on glass, and no one says anything for fear of saying the wrong thing and incurring the wrath of the King.

Rhaegar also grows restless; pouring over tome after tome searching for something. Sometimes after a long night Rhaegar will come out of the library with a wild look in his eyes, and Arthur will fear for Elia and his daughter, but Rhaegar does nothing but Arthur still worries that one day he will do something.

\----------------------------

Elia watches as court crumbles around her. Jamie Lannister is inducted and Tywin Lannister gives up his title as hand. The people whisper of who will now rule the kingdoms and it only angers Aerys more.

He hits her one day during dinner. Rhaegar has no heirs he says, as if Rhaenys does not exist, and it is only Rhaegar standing between them that saves her from a split lip.

For a moment she sees Arthur put his hand on Dawn- as he gets a dangerous look in his eyes. Elia realizes then and only then what a dangerous game they play.

\--------------------------

Aegon is all Targaeryn with silver hair and lavender eyes.

It the only way, she had pleaded to Arthur.  She had wanted him to be angry- jealous, but he was resigned as if he knew that this had been coming.

There are no more whispers about her in court now, save for the jealous women who say that she shall die soon. She intends to prove them wrong just out of spite.

Rhaegar holds his son with pride but when the maester proclaims that she can have no more children Rhaegar frowns.

After that he rarely visited her or the nursery and instead spent more and more time among his scrolls. Elia has learned to leave him alone; nothing good could come from asking him any questions.

\-----------------------------

Arthur watches with a shocked gaze as Rhaegar places the crown of roses on the Stark girls lap. His sworn brothers around him say and do nothing as the whole crowd breaks out into whispers, or in Oberyn’s case, public outrage.

He looks at Elia to see her blank expression. She is a princess through and through. She grabs Oberyn and pulls him away, Ashara following her.

\------------------------------

Elia wants to rage and scream at Rhaegar for his stupidity. He speaks of prophecies and fire and ice but she waves him off. Madness suits him well.

She asks him if he is to marry Lyanna Stark.

Yes he says.

For one selfish moment she finds relief in this. Rhaegar may have his little she-wolf and she can-

She doesn’t know what she can do. Elia touches his cheek, this man who was more a stranger to her than anything else, but they share a kinship in each other. They have faced the storm that is Aerys Targaeryn together, and now she shall have to weather the storm that he has created; she and her children.

Elia shows no surprise when Rhaegar is gone the next day, and within a few weeks, Lyanna Stark.

And Arthur, Arthur is gone as well.

\-------------------------------

He hates this.

He hates waiting and watching out for a girl that has no business playing this game. Why her? He wants to ask Rhaegar, but he doesn’t, because he has sworn to watch and wait, to see but not to speak; to look upon this madness but not to judge.  He has become the one thing he had never wanted to become; a craven.

\------------------------------

She smells the burning flesh even from her rooms. The children cry and Elia looks on with horror as Rhaella remains emotionless.

Everything is crumbling around her and she does not know what to do.

\----------------------------

How do you deal with it all she once asked Arthur. He had gone quiet for a moment before telling her that he goes inside himself.

When she sees Rhaenys’s blood she knows that it is over.  She squeezes her eyes shut and tries to not think about the monster above her.

She pictures Oberyn’s smile and hears her mother’s laugh and wishes she could see them just one last time.

Her last thought is of Arthur, how he had smiled all those years ago, how she had taken her hand in his hand and thought it was the beginning when it had turned out to be the end.

\--------------------------

When news reaches them of the sack Arthur goes quiet.  More than anything he feels numb, but that is only because it is on that day that he decides to die. When Eddard Stark comes he fights half- heartedly, only wanting it to _end_.

     He only regrets that he did not get to see their children, (because he was more a father to Aegon than Rheagar was) one last time, and that he didn’t get to kiss her just _once_ more.

But then he knows that just _once_ wouldn’t be enough; it never was.

 


End file.
